Chris Matthews: Did You Drink Three Fifths?

MSNBC's erratic Hardball host, Chris Matthews, has again gone off the deep end with his nonsense talk about the Constitution's three-fifths clause. He's claiming that conservatives believe black people are, or once were, only three-fifths of a person.
Why does a group of people that always loses elections or tends to do lately, why do they call themselves American people because - do they still count blacks as three-fifths? Three-fifths of a vote?
He's so off-base on this one it's almost laughable. It's actually cryable. The Three-fifths Compromise of the Constitution was simply a mathematical formula the Founders employed to limit the power of the slaveholding states. By refusing to give them full credit for the people in their states who were "held to service," anti-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention were placing Southern states at a disadvantage. They could not claim the full number of people in their states for representation in Congress or for clout in the...(Read Full Article)